Legacy--Another Thurber Brigade sidestep

If you go into the state Capitol of Kansas, you'll run into a gigantic mural of John Brown. It is probably one of the most iconic of those of him. He's standing with arms outstretched, a Bible in one hand, rifle in the other and he's triumphantly got one foot on the body of a slave supporter he killed.

Before the current slate of GOP conservatives took over the state (and continue to drive the state into the ground), the state was considered a hotbed of populism. A state that worked for the common good of the people. It also considered John Brown a hero. This is sacrilege to southerners of course, who see him as a murderer. But this fiery abolitionist was considered a hero because he took the law into his own hands to pay back with vengeance those who beat, butchered and enslaved humans.

I bring up John Brown because of the recent domestic terrorist attack in Charleston. A man who longs for those days of human oppression slaughtered nine unarmed, helpless souls who made the fatal mistake of trusting him, and had taken him in to their house of worship.

Sadly, there are still a number of people—hopefully a small percentage‑who will see this brutal killer as a hero for standing up for his race. They may not say it outright, but down in their inner fiber they believe that the good old days have passed. The days when they could get away with brutalizing any minority for any affront. When they could control every aspect of another human's life, from where that person would labor under harsh conditions, to selling a child into that bondage far from his family.

It’s hard to take the moral high ground because he did use violence, but at least John Brown attacked those who could not morally backup their beliefs. Plus, the murders he’s known for committing came in response to slavers from Missouri who killed men, women and children in Lawrence, Kansas in an attempt to influence the state to become a slave state. The murderer in Charleston's defense is that blacks were changing HIS world of privilege over another race.

So no, I am not advocating the use of violence to get moral change. I am saying that we can no longer just take for granted that moral change will come about because we want it to. It will only come about by people taking a more aggressive stance and demanding justice. That includes removing a symbol of hate and intolerance that waves over many state buildings in the south as well as demanding that police be held accountable for killing people of color. It means we stop allowing a broadcast company from race-baiting and belittling minorities.

 

 

No, don’t support the violence of a person such as John Brown, but support his ideal of a moral correction of a nation’s soul.

(Jay at Civil Rights protest a loooonngggg time ago during his Army days)

The Thurber Brigade has once more strayed from its usual reporting on The War Between Men and Women and apologizes profusely.  With luck, it will go back on topic soon and not get sidetracked due to the author's anger over social injustice and institutional malfeasance which seems to permeate American society on a weekly basis. Really.

 

Ahh, Thurber

Might as well Jump!

When I wrote my blog about women drivers, feminists went into attack mode. It ranged from attacking me on Twitter to complaining to my boss. I made some generalizations about females, but no one bothered to ask whether it was about one woman, all women, a few or could the behavior also relate to men?

In truth, I didn't mind the fuss because controversy gets read. I always think about Mick Jagger stating that you get noticed by being a bad boy and by destroying that hotel room (or something like that). After all, blogs are all about generalizations.  Otherwise we’d call them news stories. How people react to a blog will determine its success.

What it boils down to though, is someone reads that generalization and makes a determination about it and its author. This usually means not bothering to do much more than making a quick read.  Skimming it.  Not investigating the point made nor read more about the person who wrote it. In other words, the reader makes a jump. Jumps to a conclusion.

We all do it.

For example, I often use pictures of scantily clad females in my blogs. So when this happens I get a number of females letting me know that I'm a sexist pig and that I objectify women. I've blogged before along these lines, that many women don't know the difference between sexism and sexuality. 

That I am attracted to a woman in a bikini doesn't mean I think she's incapable of being a lawyer, a doctor, etc. It's just easier to jump to the conclusion that I'm a pig then to look deeper. I often point out to the offended female that if a women drools to her BFF about Justin Timberlake, it's not sexism, it's just that she's expressing her inner feelings and innate sexuality.

Anyway, there are a lot of incidents we commonly encounter of people jumping.

All men know that women will fall over themselves to meet that guy driving the Corvette, even though he's a scumbag (if they were to really get to know him). While the guy driving a used VW bug just isn't worth the time, no matter that he's the type who devotes himself to just one woman. They jump thinking that money/wealth equals quality.

Along the same line, if a guy sees a hot female he immediately jumps to the conclusion that she will not only be hot in bed, but also a great lifelong companion.  This even though she may really be the woman who jumps to a new guy every time a new car rolls by, or has a gigantic collection of Raggedy Ann dolls at home (and normally dresses that way too). In other words, the guy jumps that external beauty also extends to the internal too.

Very similar to the car situation, is that if a woman meets a male who has a prestigious or professional career, he's a good find. So the plastic surgeon will attract a big female following, while the electrician in the dirty blue jeans and T-shirt is a loser.

A jump by men similar to the beauty queen syndrome above, is if a guy encounters a woman in provocative clothing. A woman in a halter and tight pants is the woman of a man's dreams (or at least fantasies) and would make a worthy companion at all social gatherings. A woman in a T-shirt and blue jeans won't get a second glance when near the former, even though she might be the most provocative and exciting woman the guy might ever meet. It's too late. The guy has made the jump and hasn't bothered to look a little further.

Let me jump in here and promote my recent book, SEX and the AMERICAN MALE. When I first began promoting it on Facebook, a number of crazy feminists who had been electronically stalking me on FB and Twitter immediately began blasting to their cohorts on my evilness. 

They believed I had attempted to expose my students to raunchy stories about lurid sex acts. They jumped to the conclusion that my book was all about illicit sex by a debauched male sex fiend. Of course, SEX and the AMERICAN MALE (still just $2) is NOT about SEX at all—although the main character does wish he had it now and then with his girlfriend. The book is a social satire about American society.

Along those lines, a large number of the folks who have "liked" the SAM FaceBook page do so thinking it's about sex. I know this because if I look at their “likes” and they all seem to be about sex. Such as "Hot Sex Singers," "Sexy Women," "Wild Sex Nights," well, you get the idea.

 
Some more common jumps we see include women who think that single men have messy houses. Likewise, men often jump that all women will have a clean house. Men who see a woman sporting really short hair will believe the female to be a lesbian. Similar, a woman who sees a skinny guy with short hair and a mustache jumps that he's gay. I have been told by many people that when they first noticed my Van Dyke they assumed I was evil/mean. Of course, I'm actually a pretty laid-back, goofy guy. Trust me.

Sure, many people think that jumping to conclusions is the same as stereotyping. However, I think the latter is more of an ingrained, long-term character flaw, while the former is just lazy thinking.

Both men and women jump. It's normal (not necessarily right).  Who does it the most could be debated, as could which jump is more devious. 

So in the future you may continue to jump to conclusions about something I’ve blogged about or some picture I’ve tucked into the piece, but keep in mind that it might give me more fuel for a future blog as well as enable me to write a few more snide tweets about people like you.

(My editor and I writing another evil blog/Tweet)

Women Say the Darndest Things

When I wrote my blog about women drivers, feminists went into attack mode ranging from attacking me on Twitter to complaining to my boss. I made some generalizations about females, but...

We interrupt this blog for sports!

This is Coach J and although I hate to jump in here during this exciting and stimulating blog in which I am sure the writer is going to say something controversial in an attempt to make some people angry and garner more reader interest (he thinks), this is much more interesting and important.

 The Women's World Cup has begun!

The USA Women's National Soccer Team needs to reclaim their rightful place as the premier force in the world, and I believe this year they will do just that. Led by Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe, and bolstered by a great back-stopper in a Hope Solo this will be a team to be reckoned with.

They begin play in one of the toughest groups, the Group of Death, Group D. Here are the teams:

This is the USA's schedule:

 

A big controversy to keep an eye on are the fields themselves. For some odd reason FIFA has set all the games to be played on AstroTurf. A terrible surface for soccer and there is no way this would happen if they were men's teams. No, this probably isn't as big as giving the Men's World Cup to Qatar, but it's close.

So don't miss out on these exciting games. Tell your boss that Coach J has said it's the Patriotic thing to do to take time off to go watch the USA team at a nearby sports bar.

 

Now, back to the regularly scheduled blog already in progress. 

So although I know this might really inflame those crazy radical feminists once again, they can't deny the truth. Now, aren't you glad The Thurber Brigade got back on topic and didn't succumb to another sidestep about something like the latest police malfeasance?

(Okay, I love soccer. I've played, coached, reffed and even wrote a book about coaching. Next time, I'll really get back to the usual blog stuff. Really)

Resistance is Futile

Another Thurber Brigade Sidestep

Okay, by now you're shrugging your shoulders and saying, "oh great, once again he proves he can't stay on topic." Well you're right, but it is with just cause. As you know, I've done a lot of research on police violence, tried to get a book published, settled for an article. So you'll have to excuse me if I go off topic when confronted by police malfeasance. And if it seems like I'm doing it more and more it's because it seems to be making the news more and more.

Police bad behavior isn't new. In fact, I believe it's been at a pretty high level for some time. It's just that now it seems to be reported more often. This is largely because people are reporting it more and more on social media. This makes it hard for the mainstream media to ignore it as they did in the past.

They ignored it in the past because they subscribed to the police motto "To Maintain and Control." Maintain the status quo, control the population (serve and protect is just a PR campaign). After all, since the mainstream media is corporate controlled they are part of the status quo.

So I don't intend to mention the recent Baltimore murder of a civilian whose only offense was running while being black. Nor will I go into the case of yet another cop killing an unarmed civilian (so common now it's like reporting about a traffic accident. Yawn). No this blog is about the fake crime of "resisting arrest."

Resisting arrest is one of the police’s favorite charges against a "perp." However, in probably nine out of 10 cases it doesn't make sense. For example, a year ago the Austin police arrested a female teenage jogger for jaywalking. Yes, two burly cops stopped this young girl for crossing the street and when she began to complain they cuffed her. She was resisting arrest. 

 But wait you say, jaywalking isn't an arrestable offense. You give the person a ticket. So since there wasn't a crime to arrest her for, and because they got pissed off at her complaining, they said she was resisting. Okay, they also said she “failed to identify.” This is just as illogical, since I don’t know many joggers who carry their wallet while running, but maybe that will be another blog. 

(You are probably also saying to yourself, "wait a minute, weren't Austin Police recently asking for more money?" Yes, they need more money to stop the lawless jaywalkers of the city. A big crime here in Austin. Violent crime must be down so they need more money to police people walking across the street. Sorry, got carried away)

Over and over we see this in the news. Someone arrested for resisting. However, the majority of the time there is no crime. It's not like the person robbed a bank, then ran as the police came up. No, it's that the police pulled someone over for a broken taillight, the person gave the cop some lip, and next thing we know: resisting arrest.

To me, they might as well be honest and just say they are arresting the person because he/she pissed the cop off.

I’m lucky they haven’t pulled me over lately because surely I’d be “Arrested for Sarcasm,” or “Arrested for Making a Snide Remark to an Officer” or even worse, "being flip with a law enforcement person."

It would help the average civilian if police wore some sort of device that would indicate the mood the cop was currently experiencing. You know, something like those devices you can wear to see how much you are being exposed to radiation. These would instead indicate the emotional state of the officer.  

This way if you were stopped by a cop and his mood badge if bright red, you’d know that his wife just screamed at him as he left for work and you don’t want to say something snarky to the guy.

 
In other words, we would nearly wipe out the bogus charge of “resisting arrest” if we only knew how angry or demented the person stopping us had become.

 
I have to admit I’m also glad that the NSA, FBI and other law enforcement agencies haven’t tried to arrest me for “satirical tirades aimed at the law” via their wiretapping programs. Yes, I’d be locked up for a lonnnngggg time.

Yet again The Thurber Brigade would like to apologize for once more veering off the road of the War Between Men and Women. The Brigade promises everyone that it will return to the straight and narrow soon. Well, we'll see what happens next. 

THURBER!